calendar

Barbara van Schewick

Position / Title:

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Van Schewick’s research on the economic, regulatory, and strategic implications of communication networks bridges law, networking and economics. Her book Internet Architecture and Innovation (MIT Press 2010, Paperback 2012) is considered to be the seminal work on the science, economics and policy of network neutrality.

Her research has influenced net neutrality debates in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, and has been cited by academics, stakeholders, regulatory agencies, and other public entities worldwide. The Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 and 2014 Open Internet Orders relied heavily on her work. Her work also shaped the European Union's recently adopted guidelines implementing the European Union's net neutrality law, the 2017 Orders on zero-rating by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, and the 2016 Order on zero-rating by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Van Schewick has testified before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and has advised policy makers, legislators, and regulators in the US, Latin America, and Europe. She has submitted White Papers, ex parte letters and comments to network-neutrality-related proceedings in the U.S., Canada, India, and Europe, and co- authored amicus briefs defending the FCC’s Order against Comcast and the FCC’s 2010 and 2014 Open Internet Orders. In 2007, van Schewick was one of three academics who, together with public interest groups, filed the petition that started the FCC’s network neutrality inquiry into Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer protocols. Her letters to the FCC regarding Verizon Wireless’ blocking of tethering applications and Verizon’s, AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s blocking of Google Wallet received widespread attention and motivated the FCC and members of Congress to formally or informally investigate these cases.

Her work has been discussed by leading print and online publications around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, the Economist, the BBC, the Times of India, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, BoingBoing, Wired or Ars Technica, and has been featured on radio and television in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.

Van Schewick received the Scientific Award 2005 from the German Foundation for Law and Computer Science and the Award in Memory of Dieter Meurer 2006 from the German Association for the Use of Information Technology in Law (“EDV-Gerichtstag”) for her doctoral work. In 2010, she received the Research Prize Technical Communication 2010 from the Alcatel-Lucent Stiftung for Communications Research for her “pioneering work in the area of Internet architecture, innovation and regulation.”

Barbara van Schewick’s salary, research support, and travel* are funded through the general budget of Stanford Law School and are independent of the budget and funding of the Center for Internet and Society. A small portion of her salary is funded by the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation for her supervision of two projects at the Center related to consumer privacy and to the Fourth Amendment. She has received no direct or indirect corporate funding for her work with the Center for Internet and Society or Stanford Law School, and the Center does not accept corporate funding for its network neutrality-related work.

Today the FCC Commissioners voted 3-2 to eliminate longstanding net neutrality protections, reclassify internet service providers as ‘information services’ under Title I of the Communications Act, and ban states from enacting their own net neutrality protections.

Today, 126 academics from Europe and around the world published an open letter to European telecom regulators urging them to protect the open Internet in Europe. Regulators are currently working on guidelines that will determine how Europe’s new net neutrality law will be applied in practice.

In November 2015, T-Mobile, the nation’s third largest provider of mobile Internet access, launched a new service called Binge On that offers “unlimited” video streaming. T-Mobile customers on qualifying plans can stream video from the 42 providers currently in the program – Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Video, and others – without using their data plans, a practice known as zero-rating.

Pages

Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

On Wednesday November 22, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published his draft order outlining his plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet. His proposal would leave both the FCC and the states powerless to protect consumers and businesses against net neutrality violations by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon that connect us to the Internet.

Earlier this week Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced a radical plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet.

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Barbara van Schewick. I’m a Professor at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Center for Internet and Society there; I also have a courtesy appointment at Stanford’s Electrical Engineering Department. I have a PhD in computer science and a law degree. I’m here as an independent academic whose research for the past 16 years has focused on the relationship between Internet architecture, innovation and regulation. The FCC’s 2010 and 2015 Open Internet Rules relied heavily on my work. My work also informed TRAI’s 2016 Order on zero-rating and the European Union’s recently adopted guidelines implementing the European Union’s net neutrality law.

The post below is an open letter to European citizens, lawmakers and regulators, from our founder and Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Barbara van Schewick, and Professor Larry Lessig. Join the conversation in the comments below or on Twitter using #savetheinternet or #netneutrality.

In November 2015, T-Mobile, the third largest provider of mobile Internet access in the U.S., launched a new service called Binge On that offers “unlimited” video streaming from selected providers. Customers on qualifying plans can stream video from forty-two providers in Binge On – Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and others – without using their data plans, a practice known as zero-rating. As currently offered, Binge On violates key net neutrality principles and harms user choice, innovation, competition, and free speech online. As a result, the program is likely to violate the FCC’s general conduct rule.

Pages

""The bill ensures that ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon can't use their power over the on-ramps to the internet to interfere with the free markets that depend on the internet," Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the school's Center for Internet and Society, said in a statement."

"Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford law professor, said she expects the FCC’s order to be overturned in the courts.

“Today’s vote is a stain on the FCC,” van Schewick said in a statement. “For decades, the FCC prided itself on being careful, deliberate and transparent in its mission to keep the Internet open for free speech, commerce and innovation, while maintaining incentives for broadband providers to invest. This FCC has failed to live up to that standard.”"

"Pai maintains that his proposal is a standard rollback in government regulation that gives ISPs more freedom for things like infrastructure investments. But critics argue that this would result in fast and slow lanes for internet access and could lead to favoritism and the entrenchment of wealthy players. In other words, nothing could stop AT&T from slowing down Netflix in an effort to prioritize its own cable TV package, or outright blocking a website that’s critical of its business practices.

"Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, writes that Pai's plan "discards decades of careful work by FCC chairs of both political parties, who recognized and acted against the danger internet service providers posed to the free markets that rose out of and depend on the Internet. If his plan takes effect, ISPs would be free to disrupt how the Internet has worked for 30 years.""

"Veronica B.: Look at it this way. Imagine Amazon started a larva farm too, and they could pay for faster internet speeds, get on an internet fast lane, and advertise to their customers in a way that Patrick or any startup bug business couldn’t. See the problem? Okay, the edible bug-growing business might not be a priority for Amazon at the moment, but did you think Amazon would ever buy a grocery chain until they bought wholefoods? 10 years ago, did you think Google would get into self-driving cars?

In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.